A contact assembly for a plug-type connector assembly for use in automotive technology or other applications for electrical is connections mounted at the end of an electrical wire and housed in a plug-type connector assembly housing, The assembly has at least one locking clip for positioning and fixing the two parts together. Such assemblies, in addition to use in motor vehicles for hooking up the various electrical and electronic devices are also used in communication, and household appliances, or for other electrical plug-in connections.
Such known contact assemblies normally comprise a plug subassembly and a mating socket subassembly and are designed in such a way that, in addition to meeting electrical requirements such as the transmission of power and signals, they also meet mechanical requirements such as the application of transverse contact forces or electrical contacting of the wire (by means of a crimp connection or insulation displacement contact technology, for example), but also positioning and fixing the conductor of the plug in the socket. With regard to the requirements for currently known contact systems, there is a conflict between low longitudinal insertion forces during connection of the plug and socket on the one hand and high transverse contact forces (to ensure reliable contacting for power or signal current transmission) on the other hand. Namely, the enabling of low insertion forces results in low transverse contact forces, and vice versa. If the contact regions of the connector parts are coated with expensive substances such as gold or silver to avoid corrosion and thus high transition resistances, initial damage to these surfaces may result in complete system failure, particularly when very small currents or voltages are conducted through the plug-type connector assembly.
Another embodiment of a plug-type connector assembly is known from U.S. Pat. No. 6,736,682. The advantage of this known plug-in connection is that there is no terminal being mounted on the end of the electrical conductor for the wire. To absorb the plug-in forces when the plug and electrical connector are joined, both the end region of the electrical wire and the exposed electrical conductor are fixed in place by the connector housing. The embodiment according to FIG. 2 of U.S. Pat. No. 6,736,682 reliably provides strain relief for the wire by the fact that the wire is surrounded by the connector housing, in particular by extrusion coating. However, manufacture of such a design is extremely complex, since in the extrusion coating process care must be taken that the end region of the wire is completely extrusion-coated with plastic, while on the other hand the exposed electrical conductor must be only partially extrusion-coated with the plastic of the connector housing, since the electrical conductor must likewise be fixed in the connector housing, and in addition a portion of the electrical conductor must remain exposed so that electrical contact may be made with the complementary end region of the electrical conductor for the electrical connector. Such a design for a plug-type connector assembly can be implemented only with great difficulty, since coordination during the injection molding process, in particular for multiconductor plug-type connector assemblies, is extremely complicated and therefore very costly. Other systems described in German patent documents 42 35 245 and 101 02 137 and in U.S. Pat. No. 5,788,536 have similar problems.
In commonly owned U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/654,405 filed 17 Jan. 2007 a connector assembly is disclosed having a housing formed with a passage receiving a wire having a conductive core and an insulating sheath. The housing has an end region surrounding a stripped end of the wire where the conductor is exposed and an intermediate region surround an adjacent portion of the sheath of the wire. An element in the intermediate region fixed to the sheath secures the wire in the housing against any movement relative thereto. In other words, the plug-type connector assembly housing is no longer directly molded around the end region of the wire, but instead, these means may be inserted into the passage as an additional component or components, and/or the means are molded onto the plug-type connector assembly housing, which has a one- or multi-part design. Thus, during manufacture of the plug-type connector assembly no direct interaction is necessary between the extrusion coating of the plug-type connector assembly housing and the end region of the wire, thus enabling a significantly simpler and less complicated coordination of the affected components with one another, as well as a considerable cost reduction.